Feeling alive: Wounded Warriors part of Red Sox family during fantasy camp

Dania Maxwell/Staff
Bill Gebig, left, stands with Chris Moroski, right, a "wounded warrior" during a game at a Fantasy Baseball Training Camp in the Lee County Sports Complex on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013 in Fort Myers, Fla. Moroski served twice in Iraq with the army. "I instantly felt better when I got here," Moroski said about his experience at the camp.

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Chris Moroski's baseball team had just lost a tough game, losing a lead in the final inning on Thursday.

Moroski wasn't upset when he walked off a back field at the Lee County Sports Complex in the Boston All-Star Baseball Fantasy Camp. He knows real loss, the kind you don't get over as easily as a game slipping away.

The Blackhawk helicopter pilot and National Guard captain survived the reality of two tours of duty in Iraq. The memory of seven comrades dying one day still haunts him. War is no fantasy camp.

"I have survivor's guilt," Moroski said, sitting in the cool shade of a dugout on a splendid day in a ballpark without IED's, mortar attacks and people shooting at him.

Moroski, 42, from Narragansett, R.I., is one of nine Wounded Warriors participating this week in the camp run by Sports Adventures. Their expenses are covered. All they have to do is play, hang out with fellow campers and former big-league players who are coaches.

Not a bad week. Moroski knows other kinds of weeks. He has dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

"Honestly I feel more alive out here than I have in a very long time," Moroski said.

At the camp, they are ballplayers, men and women wearing uniforms and striking out and smacking singles and making nice plays in the field and the occasional throwing error. Just like anybody who has ever played baseball at any level.

The coaches are treating them like, well, like ballplayers with the usual locker room banter.

When former big-leaguer Steve Lyons spotted D.J. Martin, a Marine from Maine walking with a cane he had a question for the sergeant who served 15 years.

"The first day Lyons said, 'Did anybody give you a nickname,?'" Martin said.

He indicated no. Lyons then bestowed a nickname — Tripod, a reference to the cane being a third leg. Martin found it hilarious. So did fellow campers.

"I caught a fly ball on that field over there," Martin said, referring to one of the practice fields.

War memories can never be far away but on the baseball fields of Southwest Florida they may seem more distant.

"This may very well have saved my life," Moroski said of the camp. "The depression and everything, I don't think I recognized until now how bad I was."

Chrystal Lafontaine, 33, an Army reservist from Salem, N.H. recalls the night she and four comrades came under mortar attack. She said they all prayed fervently, thinking they might die.

All the recent hullabaloo about women being officially permitted in combat doesn't mean much to her.

"When I was in the military I was in combat every day," Lafontaine said.

Now, this week, they're playing baseball every day. It was a warm sunny day Thursday like many of the days they all spent in Iraq.

"The scenery was beautiful," Moroski said of Iraq. "Lots of palm trees and livestock and people going about their daily life in the city. People going to apply for a job. Laughing and joking with your buddies and all of a sudden there's an explosion and a lot of people have lost their lives."

That was Iraq

"It takes a while to realize what it does to you as a person," Moroski said.

A bad day at the ballpark means striking out or booting a ball in the field.

"The combat thing at the time in Iraq, we were shot at every day," Moroski said. "We actually went for months where every day something would happen — an explosion."

Moroski also recalls good times and good people such as many Iraqi citizens, who he said were "very friendly and very genuine."

Moroski, however, was wounded by an IED blast that caused physical and psychological problems. He said he saw the results of either an MRI or cat-scan — he doesn't recall which — and the image of his brain was vivid.

"Like marbles in a bowl," Moroski said.

The more difficult problem, he said, has been the psychological aftereffects such as depression. He wants to be a good husband to his wife, Simone, and a good father to their boys, Christian, 16, and Noah, 12, both of whom are athletes.

The day of the IED blast, though, is a raw memory.

"I really can't talk about that stuff," Moroski said as he looked out at an empty field. "If I do I'm down for a couple of days. It might shut me down."The emotions were powerful. Moroski stopped talking.

"Give me a second," he said.

Wearing a baseball uniform and hanging out with new friends has revived Moroski.

"This has been a great experience," said Moroski, who likes the camaraderie of the camp.

That sense of belonging to a unit or team is something other Wounded Warriors are enjoying this week. Mike McCombs, an Army vet who served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, noticed that the first night of the week when he met the campers and coaches.

"We were part of a family," said McCombs, a Swansea, Mass. Resident who has PTSD.

Coaches such as former big-league player Jim Corsi appreciate what the Wounded Warriors endured and what they've done.

"They've gone through stuff we can't imagine," Corsi said.

For this week, though, for these sunny days far from war zones, they're something more than veterans.

"They're part of the Red Sox family," said coach Marc Sullivan, a former Red Sox catcher.

Maybe it's only a fantasy camp but to Moroski it's much more.

"Check on me in 20 years," Moroski said. "I'll be telling you about the time I had here."